


All Great and Precious Things

by Who_Needs_Reality



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anti Octavia Blake, F/M, Heavy Angst, Loneliness, POV Clarke Griffin, S5 spec, misunderstandings and miscommunications, tw: abortion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-02 03:29:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13309485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Who_Needs_Reality/pseuds/Who_Needs_Reality
Summary: She thought she knew loneliness. Those few years before she found Madi, and even those that came after -- well it was a heavy thing, to know that she was alone on the planet. That whilst somewhere underground her people lay waiting in a bunker, whilst somewhere up in space her friends prepared to return, as far as the earth went, it was just her. It seemed like the ultimate loneliness.That, Clarke now knows, was all bullshit. That was beingalone, but that’s not the same as being lonely.Thisis lonely.Her friends are back. Bellamy is back. It should feel like the start of a new life for Clarke. But more often than not, it seems like the end.Or, {Season 5 Speculation}





	1. The Darkest Hour

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on an idea that's been bouncing round my head about Clarke's journey in Season 5. I wouldn't _really_ call this speculation because I don't actually think something like this will go down in the show. But I couldn't get rid of my ideas about what Clarke and her dynamic with Bellamy would go through. Be warned this is probably the angstiest thing I've ever written but bear in mind I always believe in Bellarke endgame. Also I was going to make this a one-shot but, as per usual, it got a lot longer than I intended plus I'm grumpy about the late air date that got announced, so I'm splitting it into two chapters because we deserve SOME new content. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Clarke sits at the end of one of the long mess tables, surrounded by the buzz of conversations without really being a part of any of them. She catches a few people throwing sidelong glances her way -- she’s gained a sort of notoriety already, the girl who survived Praimfaya alone. People wonder what she did to survive, those who remember the stories about Wanheda whisper that she killed so many people she’d stolen enough life to last forever. The thought brings her a grim amusement. If only her six years had been that interesting. Her biggest foes had been hostile weather and sometimes hunger, when scavenging wasn’t fruitful for the day. Even the few run-ins with wild animals had been less dramatic than she thinks people would like to believe -- bear versus gun isn’t much of a contest, not when her aim is good.

She casts a searching glance around the room for Madi, a force of habit from years of keeping track of the girl. Today, Clarke sees she’s perched between Raven and Monty at the table where Clarke’s -- where the space seven sit. It’s the name they gave themselves half-ironically and it stuck. They have a kind of celebrity status, the daring band that survived space by themselves for six years. Madi adores them -- right now, Clarke can see, she’s sitting with one leg on Raven’s chair and one leg on Monty’s. There aren’t any empty spaces at the table.

“Um. Could you pass the water?” a man next to her asks. His glance towards her is cursory, and he’s clearly eager to get back to his conversation.    
Clarke slides the jug over without saying anything, the man throwing a nod of thanks her way before going back to his discussion. Sighing, she picks up her plate and takes it to the basin where she washes and stacks it. No one sees her as she slips from the mess hall back to her tiny allocated room.

She thought she knew loneliness. Those few years before she found Madi, and even those that came after -- well it was a heavy thing, to know that she was alone on the planet. That whilst somewhere underground her people lay waiting in a bunker, whilst somewhere up in space her friends prepared to return, as far as the earth went, it was just her. It seemed like the ultimate loneliness.

That, Clarke now knows, was all bullshit. That was being  _ alone _ , but that’s not the same as being lonely.  _ This  _ is lonely. 

*

Clarke knew, logically speaking, that her friends coming back to Earth should have been the happiest day of her life. And for that brief moment, just after she’d freed them from Eligius, it had been. There had been cries of “oh my god” and “holy shit” and “I can’t believe it” as they hugged her and exclaimed over her. And there had been Bellamy. He’d hung back a little, waiting until Monty and Harper and Raven had all embraced her before taking his turn, squeezing her to him for a few glorious seconds before letting go so the others could greet her. She hadn’t minded it at the time, had figured he was probably just waiting for a quiet moment alone before really saying anything. 

It had never come. To begin with, she’d just told herself it was the stress of returning to Earth after six years -- that was why he was always with Raven or Murphy or Echo, that was why she never really found a moment to speak with him away from the rest of the space seven. Then she’d said it was completely understandable anxiety, that they were so used to having each other around that it would be strange to stop now. Doubt crept its way in once they finally got the bunker opened, and she saw how fiercely he embraced Octavia, how long he spoke with Kane and Miller. Doubt, and a little jealousy. The others too, they all mingled so easily, exchanging stories of underground and space, ecstatic over seeing each other again.

Abby was thrilled to see Clarke of course, had thrown her hands over her mouth in horror when Clarke had explained in low tones that no, she didn’t need a room assigned near her “friends” as no, she had not spent six years in space with them, so no, having her in proximity probably wouldn’t do anything for any of their comforts. Her mother had cried, gasped apologies and “oh, my baby” over and over as she struggled with the notion of her daughter being  _ out there  _ alone for so long. Clarke had managed to calm her down long enough to introduce her to Madi, and, well. Abby was a natural grandmother. Madi, at least, had flourished with all this newfound company. It made Clarke smile, to see the girl so inquisitive and friendly, so pleased as she told exaggerated tales of her own adventures on Earth to anyone who would listen. She fit in seamlessly, and everyone -- Clarke’s mother, Clarke’s one-time friends, the people of the bunker -- adored her. Clarke was glad. But she couldn’t help the pangs she felt as the only other person who’d lived as she had drifted away from her, discovering a new lease of life from no longer being alone.

*

It’s late when Clarke finally decides to slip out for a shower. She finds she prefers the night-time, likes the quiet that comes with everyone being asleep, with no voices talking and no minds working. She pads through the camp to the shower stalls -- and stops short when she sees Bellamy emerging from his own room.

She feels her whole body freeze as she sees him start a little, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Clarke wets her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. It’s not the  _ first  _ time they’ve been by themselves since he got back, but it might as well be. She knows her eyes are wide as she stares at him, trying to think of what to say.

Before she can find the words, he just mutters “excuse me,” and steps smoothly past her to walk in the opposite direction.

She walks numbly to the showers, and even when the warm the warm water starts running in rivulets down her body, she can’t shake the icy cold feeling that’s sinking inside of her. 

Madi’s asleep when Clarke lets herself back into their room, squeezing water from her hair with a towel. She doesn’t like to admit how alien the concept of towels and showers had seemed as they set up camp -- it was the first of many pangs of self-consciousness as she wondered whether all the people she once knew would look at her now and see someone dirty, and wild, and  _ uncivilised _ . She can tell it’s going to be one of those nights, where the confines of her room, of camp, will make her feel like she’s trapped somewhere that sleep can’t reach her. Scrawling a quick note to Madi, she slips out again, this time heading towards the edge of camp. The fence they’ve built this time is more of a rudimentary marker, a boundary rather than a defense, and she climbs over it with practiced ease. 

The rover --  _ her  _ Rover, the one she and Madi used when they were by themselves -- is hidden away in a thicket a few miles from camp. Clarke doesn’t know what instinct told her not to bring it back with her, where Octavia would have ordered it assigned to the communal fleet, or torn apart for scrap, but she’s glad she listened to it. It’s where she goes now. To escape.

The grim irony of the situation doesn’t evade her -- after so long spent longing not to be alone anymore, it’s a little pathetic that now she’s surrounded by people, she craves this little sanctuary as though her sanity rides upon it. 

Clarke doesn’t bother getting into the rover, just clambers onto the hood to stare at the stars. Once, they provided her comfort, because she used to imagine her friends there. Once, they reminded her that she wasn’t alone. Now, they remind her that she is. 

She turns on her side, swallowing past the constricting in her throat. Sometimes, she thinks if not for Madi, she’d spend all her time here. It’s not like anyone would notice. Or care.

Not for the first time, her fingers itch for the radio, the one that  _ was  _ taken apart for scrap when she took it to camp. For a while, even after the ark landed again, she used to talk to it. She’d felt herself flushing as she did it, feeling as ridiculous as though she’d been a child talking to an imaginary friend. But it had helped. Whenever she found herself stumbling in a conversation because she couldn’t read her friends glances anymore, whenever they’d all look at each other after one of them said something and burst out laughing, leaving her smiling nervously over a joke she didn’t understand, whenever she’d see Bellamy brush one of the others on the arm, or stay up talking with one of them by the fire without so much as glancing in her direction… it had soothed the sting, stilled the trembling of her hands a little, to disappear with the radio, whisper into it as she had done for well over two thousand days, pretending that Bellamy,  _ her  _ Bellamy, was still somewhere he could hear her, smile at her, hold her.

One day, she’d snapped. It was the day Octavia had ordered a start on the building of the new camp, assigning everyone their roles. Bellamy had walked into Clarke’s room with a knock.

“Bellamy!” Clarke’s cheeks grow hot whenever she recalls how desperate she’d sounded, how she’d almost tripped to the ground because she was stumbling to her feet so quickly. She could taste the anticipation, her palms slicking as she geared up for the conversation she’d thought they were about to have. 

“Sorry to disturb you,” he’d said. 

Clarke had hesitated at that. She’d wondered, dubiously, if he was nervous. But he hadn’t sounded nervous. Just clinical.

“No problem,” she’d said, wiping her palms on her trousers. “What’s up? You and I haven’t really had a chance to talk yet, so--”

“Octavia wanted me to give your assignment,” he says like she’d never even spoken, “you’re down for scouting missions. A few foraging and scavenging trips, definitely some hunting details. Given your extensive knowledge of the territory, it was deemed a good fit.”

She had stared at him, stared at the  _ automaton _ that looked and sounded exactly like her best friend, her leader-in-arms, her Bellamy.

“Are you Octavia’s lackey now or something?” she’d managed to say.

She had watched for something,  _ anything _ , a clench of the jaw, a bob of the throat…

“Schedules will be sent round soon,” was all he’d said, and then he’d left.

Clarke had stared at her radio for a good long while that day, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. She had been overtaken, suddenly, by an acute surge of  _ anger _ , a white-hot blinding rage. At Bellamy, for being a stranger who no longer knew her, at Octavia, for ordering him around like giving him a position on the council undid all the hurt Clarke knew she’d caused him before they’d been separated, at Echo and Emori, for somehow knowing Bellamy  _ better  _ than she did, for having more time with him than she did, for having more of Bellamy’s care and attention than she did; she was angry at everyone. 

And mostly at herself, for clinging to a memory, the ghost of a boy who’d left long ago and who she should have just accepted was gone. She raged at herself, for having survived so long knowing she did what she could to save her friends lives and for now sulking that they’d all just moved on and left her behind, the way she’d hoped they would. And then she’d picked up the radio, regarded it for one painful moment, then dashed it on the floor.

When she told Madi to take it to the scrap collection, she’d just said that it fell.

* 

Clarke feels stiff when she wakes up the next day. She rolls her neck, working the cricks out, and stretches, bending this way and that.

“Shit,” she swears when she sees how light it already is. She usually tries to wake up before the day starts so that she can slip inside before Madi wakes up, when there’s no one else around camp. By the looks of it though, she’ll be lucky to make it for breakfast. 

She has to half jog back to camp, and she’s grateful she’s got the knack of jumping the fence so she doesn’t have to go through the main gate. Clarke’s right -- it  _ is _ breakfast time -- and she manages to slip into the mess hall unnoticed.

Or, almost unnoticed. Because that’s when Madi sees her. 

“Clarke!” the girl says, jumping up, “you’re  _ so late _ ! Come sit here!”

Instantly, Clarke feels her stomach drop, because  _ of course _ Madi’s sitting with the space seven. But she knows if she refuses now, Madi will demand to know why, and everyone else will become awkward, and it’ll be a  _ thing _ . So she makes her way over, returning Madi’s hug tightly before slipping into the empty chair between Echo and Harper. Clarke feels tense, on edge, and there’s an indescribable wrongness to the chorus of  “heys” and “good mornings” that greet her. An awkward silence settles, Clarke prickling with the awareness that they probably already had a conversation going and her presence has disrupted it. She shrinks in on herself, picking up one of her knives to start slicing her apple.

“Is that all you’re eating?” Monty asks. His voice is a little too loud, a little too friendly, but Clarke is absurdly grateful to him for trying. 

“Yeah,” she says, trying to sound bright. Conversational. 

“You won’t be hungry?” he asks, and next to her, Harper hazards a laugh. 

“Nah,” Clarke says, “Once you’ve spent as much time eating tree bark as I have, fruit seems about as luxurious as Mount Weather’s chocolate cake.” She smiles, but her expression falters when she realises the joke didn’t land. 

“I’m sorry,” Raven says, and with a mounting sense of horror Clarke realises they didn’t get that it was humour at all. They think -- fuck, they think that was a guilt trip or something. “I feel like we haven’t had a chance to say that yet. To apologise for leaving you behind.”

“That’s not -- you don’t have to -- I wasn’t--”

“We mean it,” and it’s Bellamy’s gravelly voice that cuts in, which shuts Clarke right up. “Thank you. We wouldn’t have survived without your sacrifice.”

_ I don’t want you to be grateful!  _ something inside of her screams,  _ I would have done anything for you.  _

“That’s right,” Madi sounds proud, “you were the bravest, most badass warrior Princess in the whole land,” she says, pressing her cheek to Clarke’s, and Clarke feels herself go rigid as she realises what Madi’s saying, “you saved the bad children. All of them. Even the hundred-and-first.”

She grins at her -- it was a joke between them, the fact that Clarke kept reminding her of Bellamy in their stories -- but Clarke feels more nauseous than amused right now. 

“What’s she talking about?” Clarke hears Echo mutter to Bellamy under her breath. Bellamy just shrugs one shoulder, focusing on his food.

“It’s the stories Clarke told me!” Madi says, “about--”

“Hey Madi,” Clarke cuts in, rising to her feet, “I’m gonna walk you over to my mom’s hut, okay? I’m going scouting today.”

“Today?” Monty asks, “I thought we were scheduled for heavy rainfall.”

Clarke shrugs. “It’ll be darker. Harder to see me.”

Raven’s frowning now. “You’re being sent to spy on the Eligius camp?”   
“Something like that,” she shrugs, “I know the terrain so. Makes sense.” 

Murphy raises an eyebrow. “Are you taking a radio or anything with you? In case you need back up?”

“No.”

Bellamy drops his knife, making Clarke jump; he swears as he stoops to pick it up.

Madi pouts. “Can’t I come with you? You always used to lemme before!”

“There was no one to watch you before.”

“Nuh uh, I was just badass enough that you needed me to help!”

Clarke smiles wryly at her. “Whatever it was, Octavia says I have to go alone, and she’s in charge.”

Madi rolls her eyes. “Ugh,  _ why _ ? Her rules are dumb, and besides, why is  _ she  _ in charge? Because you always said that it was you and--”

“Time to go,” Clarke snaps, grabbing Madi by the wrist and marching straight from the mess hall. It’s not just the awkwardness of hearing Madi repeat some of Clarke’s…  _ qualms _ about Octavia in front of Bellamy. Clarke lets her eyes flit round quickly, to make sure no one’s paying them any attention. She needn’t have worried; they might as well be invisible.

Madi’s never had to learn to keep her thoughts to herself, or be careful who she tells what to. But Clarke had instantly recognised the tension that underscored the bunker when they finally opened it. It was the same one that had constantly loomed over the Ark, especially in during the year her father died. It hadn’t taken long to surmise that Octavia’s reign had been both tyrannical and unpopular. Clarke doesn’t know the exact details, but she’s overheard enough and cobbled together a few context clues and worked out that whatever Octavia’s rules may be, the punishments she’s set for breaking them are harsh. She wonders what Bellamy thinks of it all -- he had been overjoyed to see his little sister again, but Clarke’s gaze had lingered on the tense set of his frame when Kane had told them all how just the day before, Octavia had run Jaha through with her own sword for speaking against her at one meeting too many. But it’s not like Clarke can just ask him anymore. Besides, he’s apparently happy to be Octavia’s personal assistant, so Clarke doubts he’s too torn up over anything.

Speaking of Octavia, Clarke has to check in with her before being sent off. She chafes against the arrangement -- she can’t quite shake the image of the scars Octavia left on her own brother’s face, or of the ease with which she’d embraced blood and steel. She never took the girl for a leader, and it’s hard to settle into this new dynamic, where Clarke is the weapon and Octavia the one giving orders -- but she jumps at these solo scouting missions, jumps at the chance to be alone because she’s supposed to be, to focus on something outside of the gnawing sense of loneliness. 

“--not sure about this, O” she hears a voice saying from inside Octavia’s hut, and she stops short because it’s  _ him _ . She doesn’t know how Bellamy got here before she did. Something about his tone makes her pause and listen.

“She’s the best person for the job, Bell,” Octavia’s saying, “no one else knows the land the way she does.”   
“And you really think that’s a good thing?” he says. 

For a moment, neither of them speak. 

“Think about it,” Bellamy says, “She knew Eligius before we did. She had communications with them. And she’s the only one who can really scope them out at this point.”

“You’re saying she could work against us?” Octavia says.

“It’s a possibility,” Bellamy says.

“You know her best,” Octavia sounds tense, “but she sacrificed herself so you guys could survive. You think she’d turn on us now?”

“I  _ don’t  _ know. That’s what I’m saying. Who knows what she’ll do now? For all we know she could just be looking to cut a deal that gets her and her kid out of here and somewhere that Eligius guarantees them access to tech and a cut of resources. We have no way of being sure, and I don’t think it’s smart to send someone to Eligius -- a completely unknown and probably hostile entity -- with all our camp’s information.”

“You think I shouldn’t send her?”

“Not now,” he says, “not when we know so little. I don’t trust her.”

Clarke doesn’t notice that her fingernails were digging into the palm of her hand until they break skin and she feels blood beading. 

“I need to go now,” Bellamy said, “I promised Kane I’d help setting up the farm patches.”

“Okay,” Octavia says, “you go do that.”

“Are you sending her out today?” he asks.

“I’m thinking.”

Clarke presses herself to the side of the hut so that Bellamy doesn’t see her as he steps out. The sight of him sends bile rising in her throat.

She waits until he’s out of sight before pushing her way into the hut

“You said to check in with you before I head out,” Clarke says.

Octavia’s eyeing her, and Clarke feels her skin crawl. “You seem like you’re in a hurry.”

“I want to head out so I make some headway before the storm hits.”

The other girl still looks like she’s considering something before speaking. “Okay. Remember, you’re going to observe only. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t be seen. Come straight back. Got it?”

Clarke grits her teeth against a response, swallowing down the long dormant fire of the Princess who was always in charge. That girl’s not to be relied upon anymore. “Yes.”

Octavia waves her hand in dismissal, and it takes momentous effort not to snort. It’s the gesture of overconfidence, someone too comfortable in their power. That’s never a good position to be in. Clarke wonders why Octavia hasn’t stopped her from going. After all, Bellamy delivered  _ such  _ a compelling case against her. Clarke would be loathe to trust anyone that Bellamy gave such a scathing indictment. 

The simmering hurt and anger she feels makes her journey to the Eligius camp seem impossibly fast, blood pounding in her ears and drowning out much thought. 

She drops to a crouch behind a bush on the edges of the Eligius encampment. It’s not very big -- they seem to still be living mostly out of their ship -- but it is well guarded. Clarke makes a mental note of the perimeter, where the guards are placed. There aren’t that many people milling about outside, the odd few she sees scattered around seem to be doing errands of some kind, she can’t really tell.

It’s while she’s moving as quietly as she can to a different vantage point that she sees it, from the corner of her eye. There’s a figure, some feet behind her, tucked into the trees. Watching her.

She angles herself carefully, so that her peripheral vision is clearer. 

Her throat closes. 

It’s a  _ sniper _ .

The figure’s wearing a hood to help them camouflage, and, more to the point, is holding a rifle that’s trained on her.

She does the maths in her head quickly. Clearly, this is Octavia’s solution to Bellamy’s dilemma. If the sniper sees Clarke doing anything untoward…

Well then he’ll do what fucking Praimfaya couldn’t.

*

The storm gets bad as she starts back, really bad. The rain is so heavy it stings, and thunder keeps sounding. She’s used to weather like this by now, makes sure to duck into caves every so often to keep from soaking through too dangerously, avoiding tree cover as much as possible in case of lightning. She hears the distinct snapping of breaking trunks and falling branches around her.

She’s drenched and her teeth are chattering by the time she makes it back to camp -- she makes sure she comes through the main gate so that her sniper shadow doesn’t get wind of her private escape route. 

Clarke honestly wants nothing more than to go back to her room and lie in front of a heater for a while. But it figures that after days of scarcely glimpsing Bellamy even though she craved his presence, the day she decides she’d like to be as far away from him as she can, he’s the first person he sees when she gets back to camp.

He’s sitting by the guard post, drumming restlessly on his leg with his fingers, but he jolts up when he sees her walk in.

Bellamy’s been waiting for her, she realises with a sour taste in her mouth, probably making sure she hasn’t cut and run, or led a band of Eligius soldiers to their doorstep.

She tries to march straight past him, but he stops her.

“You’re late,” he says, his tone flat.

“In case you didn’t notice, the weather slowed me down. There’s the slightest bit of drizzle.”

She hazards a glance at him. He’s frowning, almost confused. She looks away.

“We were expecting you back sooner, given it was just a recon trip,” he says, “I was making sure you arrived.”

“Well, here I am,” she gestures at herself mockingly, “alive and in one piece, I’m sure you’re disappointed to learn. You can call off your bloodhound now.”

She storms off to her room afterwards, not waiting to hear his response. It’s not like he’s following her anyway.

When she finally gets her heater on and peels off her wet clothes, she reaches up to shove a damp lock of hair from where it’s caught on her lip.

The gesture causes a memory to rise, sharp and acute, unbidden. A different set of fingers brushing her mouth, just gently as they fed her the chip. The same set of fingers grasping her hand when she’d reached for him.

_ I believe you _ .

_ I don’t trust her. _

She has to go get Madi from her mother’s room, has to go get something to eat, shower. And she will, in a moment. For now though, Clarke just curls into a ball, her whole frame shaking, wracked with sobs as she lets herself cry at last.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s foreign to her, as she watches him walk a step behind Octavia, nodding tightly as he accepts orders, murmuring suggestions to his sister in a low voice. Clarke doesn’t know him. She wishes she didn’t care. She wishes she could think it back, think _I don’t trust him _without something in her heart screaming at her, insisting that she does, that she can’t tear him away, this one integral part of her soul.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I just want to say thank you all so much for the incredible response to Chapter 1. I can't overstate how encouraging and amazing it is to know so many of you are reading and enjoying what I write, so thank you thank you thank you! Chapter 2 (later than I promised but 3x longer to make up for is) goes out to you guys, and I hope you enjoy it!

The loneliness takes on a different colour after that. Before, she’d just felt invisible, forgotten after years of being presumed dead. A ghost. Now -- now, there’s a constant buzz of awareness trailing her, the constant knowledge that instead of being invisible, she’s watched. Judged, measured up and analysed. The first few days after the space seven returned, when Clarke had been feeling particularly self-pitying, she had imagined the conversations they might have had as they agreed to let her memory go, to leave her in the past where she belonged, with the rest of the dead. She’d traced the letters of her own name on the strap of her gun in pencil, contemplating carving it in there with all the other corpses. Now though, she imagines a new type of conversation, convinces herself she can hear them all, hunched over their table. 

_ Who knows what she’s like?  _ she imagines them saying as they exchange whispers in the family they’ve found without her.  _ She’s always been a killer. She’s always been willing to sell us out. And that was when she was our friend. And the girl we called our friend is dead. _

Clarke has taken to angling herself away from their table, trying to look somewhere that won’t send a slew of imaginary conversations through her head. It doesn’t really help, not when she imagines going up to them -- to  _ him _ \-- and asking.

_ Didn’t you love me?  _ she’d ask if she was braver.

_ What does it matter now? I don’t trust you. What does it matter now? Who could?  _ he’d answer if he was speaking to her.

She stares at herself in the tiny mirror above her sink for a minute. She’s tanned, not as much as she has been in the past few years, but noticeably more so than the ones who’ve spent the past six years outside of the reach of the sun. Clarke knows everyone saw it when they looked at her for the first time, after the ring landed, after the bunker opened. She and Madi had a glow about them, the kind of radiance that only came from sunlight and fresh air and rainfall. Never mind that the air would have killed anyone else. It doesn’t matter now. Being at camp, she doesn’t get to spend as much time outside. There’s certainly no glow anymore; the tan, she’s sure, will fade to pallour, and the lean body of muscles borne of years of exploring the outdoors will soften. Surprisingly, the knowledge of the inevitable decay doesn’t upset her. No, as she combs through her hair -- which will darken, now it no longer spends its day bleached in sun (the pink washed out long ago) -- she finds herself accepting that particular aspect of her face with quiet satisfaction. There’s a tidy symmetry to knowing that her body is deteriorating as quickly as her emotions.

In spite of herself, she feels herself reaching for him, feels her mind and her heart and her soul aching for him even though she tells herself to stop. It’s not like he’d notice anyway. He seems more distant than ever, like she’s watching him from underwater, where she can’t hear him, can’t see anything more than a fractured image of him, no hint of the man she once knew so well to comfort her. He’s foreign to her, as she watches him walk a step behind Octavia, nodding tightly as he accepts orders, murmuring suggestions to his sister in a low voice. Clarke doesn’t know him. She wishes she didn’t care. She wishes she could think it back, think  _ I don’t trust him  _ without something in her heart screaming at her, insisting that she does, that she can’t tear him away, this one integral part of her soul. 

Work doesn’t  _ help _ exactly, but it gives her something to do, to focus on for a while so she can stop her mind from conjuring up her own personal torture chamber. She hasn’t been assigned anymore solo missions, just group scavenging and hunting details. Bellamy’s warning landed, it would seem. When she’s at camp, she helps her mother in the medbay. It feels strange, like wearing an old set of clothes she hasn’t seen in years that still just about fits but feels tighter than it should. There’s something about it that rings false to her, pretending she slots back into the role she once had. She’s no leader, she’s no doctor. Clarke’s become unused to the confines and protocol of the clinic -- when it was just her and Madi, medical care would have to consist of carefully sought out plants and torn up strips of cloth, even the occasional red-hot dagger. Coming back to scheduled shifts and sterilised syringes after years of that is disorienting. But she needs to focus. Abby is talking to her about some kind of new treatment protocol they want to introduce when Jackson bursts through the doors, ushering in a pair of guys carrying a stretcher. One of the men is Bellamy, but for once that’s not where Clarke’s attention immediately jumps. The woman,  _ girl _ even, on the stretcher, is covered in blood, buckets of it soaking from her abdominal region. 

“We saw blood tracking from one of the bathroom stalls,” Bellamy says to Abby, out-of-breath, “found her like this.”

“Put her over there,” Abby barks at one of the interns, “Clarke, start cleaning the blood.”

She feels Bellamy’s gaze flit at her and away as she gathers swabs of cotton, but ignores it, more pressing matters at hand.

“Abby, what happened?” he asks.

Her mother looks at Jackson with a resigned question in her eyes, and Jackson gives her a tight-lipped nod.

“Botched attempt to carry out an abortion on herself.”

Clarke can tell by his voice that his face must be twisted into a mask of horror. She strips away the girl’s shirt, trying to staunch the blood as best she can.

“Why would she do something like this?” he asks, his voice hoarse, “why not just come here?”

“People are scared to,” Jackson says as he hurries round the room, gathering supplies, “with the law as harsh as it is.”

Bellamy’s voice sounds like he’s forcing it out. “The law?”

“Octavia’s population control policy,” the doctor says, barely pausing.

“What policy?” Bellamy asks. Clarke knows without looking that the set of his jaw is tense. 

“You don’t know?” the guy who helped Bellamy carry the girl -- Neil, Clarke thinks his name is -- says. “She implemented it when we started having food shortages. All couples have to put in formal requests before having children. No more than one child per family. And any unsanctioned pregnancy is punishable by death.” He scoffs, disgusted. “We get shit like this every other week, girls too fucking terrified to get caught once they’re knocked up so they try to solve the  _ problem  _ themselves.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything. She still doesn’t look at him. 

*   
The surgery takes hours. By the end of it, the girl is better than she was, but whether or not she live is less certain. 

“All we can do is wait,” Abby says.

Clarke just nods and goes to wash up. She watches the blood dry on her scrubs. The sight is alien after so long, and suddenly she can’t wait to tear the soiled garments off and scrub herself clean. She’s making her way to the showers when she hears it, the single ragged breath marking the sound of someone holding back a sob that she’d never have heard if she wasn’t so totally,  _ pathetically  _ attuned to him, even after all this time. 

She should keep walking. She should just move past him like she hasn’t noticed him, like he’s as invisible to her as she is to him. Clarke almost does, almost makes it brusquely past him. But then he speaks.

“She forgot.”

Clarke freezes, the sound of his voice like a snare. 

“She was stuck under that floor for a year and never got over it, we lost our mother, we --” he breaks off on a choked sound, “she just fucking  _ forgot _ .” Then he looks up at her.

It’s the look that nearly undoes her then and there. There’s a cracked-open look in his eyes; he looks so vulnerable, and gentle, and --

Bellamy. He looks like Bellamy,  _ her  _ Bellamy. She can’t help it, turning to look at him. Her body turns almost of its own volition, like the needle of a compass swinging northwards. 

She hesitates before speaking again -- it feels significant, like the next words out of her mouth have the power to fix everything, if she chooses them wisely. It’s a strange feeling, having to measure her thoughts so carefully before speaking to Bellamy instead of just letting him read her.

“People in charge sometimes spend so much time focusing on the greatest good that they lose sight of the people they’re supposed to protect.”

Bellamy pushes off of the wall he was leaning against. He holds himself differently now, Clarke notices -- as straight-backed and upright as ever, but there’s a subtlety to his stance now. Bellamy is more content to hold himself back a little, observe a room instead of commanding it. He doesn’t seem like he’s trying to project power and authority anymore; he exudes them quietly.

He’s looking at her, and it makes it hard to breathe.  

“My sister, my responsibility,” he says, and the words sound flat, hollow.

“It’s not on you anymore,” Clarke says carefully, “I know that doesn’t mean you’ll just stop caring. But her choices are her own Bellamy.”

“She’s doing this to someone else,” he says, his voice hoarse, “somewhere out here there could be a kid, and he has a sister, and no one can know--” he cuts himself off, wiping a hand down his face. “We were supposed to be past this,” he says, sounding hoarse, “she was the first of us on the ground,  _ she  _ was supposed to--” he cuts himself off again.

A part of Clarke aches to reach for him, but she doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” she says, “this isn’t the world you deserved to come back to.”

His eyes fly to hers then, a note of fire lighting them like she’s just woken him with a bucket of cold water, and he’s pushing up to his feet. “It is what it is,” he snaps. “I have to go check on something.”

Clarke feels herself shutter, the closed tone of his voice sending her own hackles rising. “Don’t let me keep you,” she says, and pushes past him, walking away before he has a chance to.

She feels sharp prickles of anger up her arms, and a hot flush of embarrassment crawling up her neck as she moves. It was stupid,  _ stupid  _ to let the bud of hope start to unfurl in her chest, to think that just because he had a moment of vulnerability the wall of ice between them would suddenly melt and everything would be what it once was. Everything they had, everything they were -- it all went up in flames with Praimfaya. 

She rounds a corner and sees Miller, and she marches up to him. “Miller,” she says, “hey.”

He glances up, looking a little surprised to see her talking. “I go by Nate now,” he says.

She laughs.  _ Scoffs _ even. “Of course. Of fucking  _ course  _ you do. Why would you have the same name?”

He just raises an eyebrow. His taciturnity hasn’t changed, apparently.

“Alcohol,” she spits, “where can I get some?”

It’s Miller’s --  _ Nate’s  _ turn to scoff. “Good luck with that. Octavia clamped down on brewing in the first year. Said it was a waste of resources and she couldn’t afford drunken citizens.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Alcohol, reproductive freedom. Is there anything else she destroyed while I was out?”

Nate gives her a sidelong glance. “No one told you, did they?”

She can feel the smile as it sits on her face; it’s empty and twisted and a little cruel. “As a rule,” she says, “just assume that no one’s spoken to me about anything.”

Nate’s gaze lingers on her a moment longer, then he says “come on.”

“What?”

“Come with me.”

She follows him as he ducks in and around the cabins, before reaching the very edges of camp. He bends down and starts moving around a pile of dead leaves and foliage, revealing a low mound in the earth that he digs up with his bare hands. He glances around surreptitiously before pulling something out of the pit, turning around, and displaying it to her with a grin. “Bingo.”

She peers closer, then lets out a huff of laughter when she sees what it is -- a small crate holding a few dusty glass jars of what looks an awful lot like moonshine.

“You were gonna hold out on me, huh?”

“Ah gimme a break,” he says, “I’ve had these bad boys hidden since  _ before  _ the death wave. Buried them when we got out.”

“You clearly have your priorities straight.”

“What? It would have sucked if the first time I saw the sun in six years Octavia just spit-roasted me for having contrabands. Now come on, we should go somewhere we can’t be seen.” 

They make their way to Clarke’s cabin, lock the door behind them, and pour out the moonshine into two mugs. Clarke swigs it, wincing at the burn of it down her throat, then swigs it again.

“Jesus,” Nate says, “you wanna go any faster?”

“It’s my first drink in six years,” she grouses.

“Mine too,” he points out, taking a more measured sip. “ _ Fuck  _ this stuff tastes like battery acid.”

“Why are you doing this anyway?” Clarke asks him.

“Sharing my precious alcohol? God knows.”

“No.  _ This _ ,” she gestures at the space between them. “Talking to me. Hanging out. No one else wants to.” She takes another gulp. “Didn’t you hear? I’m a terrifying untrustworthy savage who could go rogue and kill you all in your sleep just for kicks.”

Nate snorts. “I doubt you’re any more terrifying than anything we’ve already been dealing with.”

“Yeah I got a front row seat to the results of the population control policy,” she grimaces. “It can’t have been pretty for six years.”

“I’ll say.” Nate sips again. “It was like some kind of horror story. Everyone was going stir crazy. Everywhere you turned, there were  _ people _ . Not friends, not family, just people. Breathing the same air day-in, day-out. We all came close to killing each other more times than I can count.”

“Guess Octavia had a tough time keeping control then.”

“Oh, she had her ways.”

Something in his voice makes Clarke look up. He’s glowering at the wall. 

“You heard about the resource shortages, right?”

Clarke nods --  _ that  _ she had heard about, if only from eavesdropping. It was all anyone had talked about upon being freed from the bunker. The bunker had only had supplies to last 400 people for five years. After Octavia’s victory at the conclave, it ended up having to house three times that amount for a year longer than intended -- they never stood a chance.

“Well when people initially caught on that supplies were running out, things got really bad. Fights broke out everyday, people turned on each other. To begin with Octavia just doubled down on law enforcement. People got executed for  _ anything _ , curfews got put in place, any and all scientists had to work double the hours trying to figure how to produce more food.”

It’s strange to think about, that all this roiling mounting chaos was happening somewhere under her feet.

“Anyway, things just got worse, and Octavia went harder and harder. She became a tyrant. And then, well…” Nate grimaces as he takes a drink, his eyes far away. “Were you ever hungry?” he asks, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What?”   
“When you were out there. Did you ever get close to starving?”

Clarke thinks back for a moment. It had been hard at times, yes, there had been some days she’d gone without food but… well, she’d always managed.

“We were starving. Twelve hundred of us. And people were losing it. So one day Octavia just…”

He swallows, and Clarke feels an unpleasant roiling in her stomach.

“A riot broke out,” he says, slow and quiet. “And she just shot up like twenty people. Just fucking lost it. And then when everyone shut up she just went:  _ if you’re hungry, then eat _ . And she--” Nate takes another drink, and Clarke can’t tell if he just needs the liquid courage or if he’s avoiding having to talk “she hacked the hand off one of the bodies and started eating it.”

Clarke laughs. She can’t help it, it just sort of  _ rips  _ out of her, a short, high, hysterical sound, one that she muffles when she slaps a hand over her mouth in horror. 

“Sorry,” she says, “I’m sorry. Just--”

“It sounds crazy, huh?” Nate smiles but there’s no mirth behind it, “but it happened. People were just… people were screaming, some of the younger ones threw up then and there, but some…” He closes his eyes. “Some people joined her.”

“Joined her.”

He nods. “They were desperate, and I think it just sent them over the edge…they broke into the crypt room as well and started going for the frozen bodies.”

She laughs again, another hysterical giggle escaping. And then she can’t stop -- maybe it’s the alcohol, or just the fact that it’s one of the worst things she’s ever heard. The world has ended twice, she’s committed mass murders and done surgeries with burning knives and watched her mother almost hang herself and had her best friend locked up, but this is it. Bellamy’s little sister, the one who spent the first week on the ground flirting with everything that moved and swimming in the lake and laughing at butterflies…she  _ ate  _ human flesh. It’s the worst, most absurd thing Clarke has ever heard, and she laughs and laughs and laughs, keeps laughing because if she stops she thinks she might be sick.

Nate’s smile twists, and Clarke doesn’t even know if he can hear her. “They stopped pretty soon. Abby went insane, telling them it would make them ill. Octavia had her locked up until all the cannibals started throwing up and dropping like flies. They abandoned it after that. Turns out the unexpected health hazards aren’t worth it. Still, do you know what it’s like, looking at your neighbour and thinking  _ you seem like a good guy Jason, but I know you’d eat me if it came down to it _ ?” 

They’re both snorting now, tears streaming down their faces. 

“Octavia had some kind of fit after all of it. And then Kane goes to her and he’s all serious like  _ the need to survive can push us to do terrible things _ ,” the accuracy of Nate’s impersonation is devastating, “ _ but we must not lose sight of who we are  _ blah blah blah. And then she threatened to have him executed for questioning her judgement.”

“I mean, fair enough,” Clarke offers, breathless with laughter, “he was trying to give a motivational speech to a  _ cannibal _ .”

The laughter carries them into the evening, when Clarke finally remembers to ask “does Bellamy know?”

“About Octavia?” Nate shrugs, and Clarke’s just drunk enough that she doesn’t care about having to beg other people for nuggets of information on Bellamy. “Nah. I mean, guy’s not an idiot, I think he’s worked out she wasn’t exactly a beloved leader. But she’s his sister, he as good as said the idea of coming back to her is the only thing that kept him going on hard days. Who’s gonna ruin that by telling him she went on the worst fad diet of all time while he was away?” 

Nate chuckles to himself, but Clarke feels drained of laughter by now. 

“I get it,” she says. “This was fun. But I should go back to bed now.” 

She stumbles as she goes -- it turns out six years without alcohol will rid you of any and all tolerance. It’s a good thing Madi’s with Abby tonight, she won’t have to see Clarke in this state. It’s slightly tricky for Clarke to remember which way to go exactly, given that all the cabi look kind of the same. She recognises  _ that  _ one, however, that one’s Echo’s. She knows because she’s seen Bellamy and some of the others duck in there every now and then, to hang out and talk about… well Clarke wouldn’t know, would she? It irritates her, the sight of the cabin, and suddenly, Clarke’s marching up to it, rapping on the door with the flat of her palm. 

It swings open and Echo emerges. Clarke hates that the woman looks good even as she was clearly getting ready for bed, hates that she probably looked this good, even better, in space for 6 years. When B-- when  _ they  _ were all bored with nothing to do but each other. And Clarke hates that she hates it, but Echo’s there now, staring at her.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know you,” Clarke says, and she can see from the way that Echo’s mouth curls downwards that her drunkenness can probably be heard in her voice. “Like. I know who you are obviously. And I know you’ve killed and tried to kill a bunch of people. And I know my friends are your friends now, even if they’re not really mine anymore. But I don’t  _ know  _ you.”

Echo looks confused, suspicious even. 

That makes Clarke laugh. “I’m not gonna hurt you or anything,” she says, “besides, even if I tried I think you’d beat me. You almost have before. But you probably don’t remember that. It was a really long time ago. I don’t think it even mattered that much. Because, you know,” Clarke waves a hand behind her, “the world went  _ boom _ .”

Echo sighs. “It’s too late at night to deal with this right now, hang on.” She slips nimbly behind Clarke -- she’s  _ so nimble  _ it’s annoying -- and moves a few cabins over, knocking on one. 

Clarke has to squint to see who emerges, and then groans, because of  _ course  _ it’s Bellamy, Bellamy who she really doesn't feel like seeing right now. He and Echo exchange a few words, their heads close together, and then he looks up to see where Echo’s pointing -- right at her. They make their way back over to Clarke, and Clarke folds her arms across her chest, feeling defensive all of a sudden.

“You’re drunk,” he says dully. 

She shrugs at him. 

“You got this?” Echo asks from behind her. 

“Yeah,” he nods, “thanks for taking care of things.”

She smirks, “I always do.”

Bellamy smirks in return, and suddenly Clarke feels ill, pitching a little with it.

“Shit,” Bellamy moves as though to catch her, but she steps away from him. “‘S Fine,” she says.”

Echo disappears back inside, closing the door behind her.

“Come on,” Bellamy sighs, “let’s get you back before anyone sees you.”

“I’m  _ drunk _ ,” she grumbles, “not dying. I can get back by myself.”

He fixes her with a level stare. “And how did you  _ get  _ drunk, Clarke?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “ _ Alcohol _ . Duh. I may not have had any for six years but I know what it is.”

Bellamy sighs. “And you know alcohol is contraband right? It’s a punishable offence.”

Clarke groans. “What, you gonna tell on me to your little sister? Besides, is she even still in charge? No one’s in the bunker anymore.”

He clenches his jaw. “Come on, Clarke.”

Oh, she forgot -- he’s not going to engage in conversation. Right. She follows him with a sigh.

“Jesus,” he mutters when they’ve walked right to the far edges of camp, “your cabin really is in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m used to it,” she snipes, and his expression shutters.

He takes the key when she fumbles with it, holding the door open for her. She edges past him, conscious not to accidentally brush him. 

“Can you get changed?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She peels starts stripping her shirt off, and Bellamy whips around so he’s facing the other way. Clarke feels a flush creeping up her neck at that -- she’s not used to remembering her modesty after so long with just Madi around, and Bellamy’s alarm makes her feel very self-conscious all of a sudden. She hurries to change quickly.

“You done?” he asks after a while.

“Yes.”

He turns around warily, then hands her a flask.

She cocks an eyebrow at him. “I thought it was  _ contraband _ .”

“It’s water. Drink up.”

She takes it, but doesn’t move her eyes from him while she drinks. “Why are you doing this?” she asks.

“Doing what?”

“Pretending to give a shit.”

He tenses his jaw but says nothing.

“Seriously Bellamy,” she says, “I survived a radioactive apocalypse and life on a razed planet with only a little kid for help. I can manage one night of drunkenness without forcing you to have to spend half an hour pretending to be able to stand the sight of me.”   
“Make sure you drink the whole thing,” he grits out, “or you’ll regret it in the morning.” 

But she’s  _ getting _ to him, she can tell. It feels good, satisfying. She may not be able to get him to smile at her or talk to her anymore, but it’s good to know she can still piss him off. He may be restraining himself better, but she knows his irritation when she sees it.

“Besides,” she drawls, making a show of taking another long swing of water, refusing to let go of his eye contact now that she has it, “what’s it to you if I  _ do  _ get caught? If your sister does find me wandering round with  _ illegal substances _ ? You’re always on her side anyway.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says, and she can hear the undercurrent of tension in his voice. 

“Why, because I’m so  _ drunk _ ? Or because I’m so  _ untrustworthy _ that you won’t even believe I’m telling you my own thoughts correctly.”

He looks like she’s slapped him, which sends a savage thrill through her.  _ Good _ she thinks,  _ let’s see how he likes it.  _

“You heard,” he says. His voice comes out a whisper like he’s talking to himself. “You heard me. Talking to O.”

“In any case,” she powers on, the buzz of finally,  _ finally  _ getting some kind of response from him -- some sign he hears her -- propelling her, “if Octavia did find me and shoot me or whatever, that would solve a lot of problems for you two. You wouldn’t have to waste manpower on a sniper again.” She laughs, cold and hollow.

“Clarke,” Bellamy’s staring at her. She doesn’t think about how unusual it is to hear him say her name. “Clarke. What are you talking about?”

She slips into the sheets, rolling over so she’s facing the wall. “See,” she mumbles, “I’m not too drunk to put myself to bed.”

He reaches over and brushes a few of the sweat-matted strands of hair from her face. The gentleness of the touch startles her, she’s been without his tactility for so long. 

“What do you mean?” he asks again. 

But she’s tired, all of a sudden, tired to her bones. “You know what,” she grumbles, “you and Octavia must have talked about that in one of your secret meetings. I’m tired,” she says, “goodnight.”

It’s a long, long moment before she thinks she hears him whisper “goodnight, Clarke,” and slip out of her cabin, leaving her to the darkness and a shallow, stilted sleep.

*

It figures that she wakes up with a pounding headache, feeling like her mouth’s been stuffed with cotton wool, and the uneasy recollection of her conversations from last night. The memories return to her in fragments -- cannibalism, knocking on Echo’s door, Bellamy…

The last thought is what gets her out of bed, groaning. There’s something deeply disconcerting about the fact that her first proper, sustained interaction with Bellamy since he got back happened while she was drunk and angry. And that’s not helped by the knowledge that even now, as she gets dressed, he’s probably cloistered away, taking orders from his sister, the  _ cannibal _ . It hasn’t really hit Clarke yet, the sheer depravity of the idea; it still seems like something she came up with in a fever dream because, well, that kind of thing just doesn’t  _ happen _ .

But then again, why not? The mountain men drained blood from teenagers for their own medical treatment. When ALIE was in the height of her power, people were being  _ crucified  _ on the streets. The world, Clarke already knows, is usually brutal and ugly. In retrospect, something this warped was probably only to be expected.

Still, she can’t stop her mind from wandering back to Bellamy’s expression, his broken voice when he saw the girl in the hospital yesterday. He can’t be oblivious, she knows, to the murkier parts of his sister’s reign. It doesn’t  _ surprise  _ her that he stands beside her -- behind her -- so unwaveringly, but… 

The Bellamy she knows, the Bellamy she knew… he was fiercely loyal to Octavia, would have given pretty much anything for her. But he was a  _ good  _ man, he  _ cared  _ about people, his people. She doesn’t want to think about what that Bellamy would have done, had he discovered the whole of the truth. She doesn’t like to think about what it would have done to him.

Clarke pulls her rifle from where it’s stashed under bed and slings it across her chest. She runs her finger along the strap, which is frayed and discoloured with age, and etched with so many names. It was something she’d started doing when she first grew afraid of forgetting. There are the larger names, the ones she did first --  _ Dad. Wells. Charlotte. Atom. Anya. Finn. Lexa.  _ \-- and then the other ones, scratched in as time wore on. As she’d remembered.  _ Sinclair. Riley. Jasper. Gina.  _ Her finger stops as it traces the most recent engraving, the one from a year ago.  _ The Bunker _ . She hadn’t been able to bring herself to go through every name, to let go of each one, but she’d needed to force herself to stop thinking anyone was coming back. After that, there was no one left to die.

Apart from them.

Madi had asked her, at the time, why she didn’t add  _ GoSci Ring _ , or even each individual name to her collection. There was no good answer -- at the time, they were as likely dead as those in the bunker. But she hadn’t been able to do it. To add a new name was to let go. And even if she’d been able to get through four, five, six names, Clarke knows she’d never have quite managed to let go of the seventh. Of the hundred-and-first. Of him. 

She never added their names, never consigned him to the graveyard she wears around her neck. 

_ So why do you keep thinking about him like he’s dead? _

He’s not dead. She made sure of that, she gave up her own shot to make sure he and the rest of them survived. And she’d do it again. Even know, even as she wanders camp feeling like a ghost, watching as Bellamy walks with Echo and Monty, laughing and talking a world away from her, even now, she knows she’d do it again without hesitating. She just wishes it didn’t make her feel so pathetic, or so angry. 

Lost in her thoughts as she is, she doesn’t even notice when Echo breaks away from the other two and walks up to her. 

“Clarke.”

She glances up at her quickly, and shoves her hands in her pockets. It’s probably a good thing alcohol is hard to come by -- apparently, it sets up uncomfortable situations for Clarke. Like this one.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Clarke says quickly, her eyes already darting around to find the quickest escape route. “I was… unwell. And sleep-deprived. Not thinking straight, it won’t happen again.” She  _ hates  _ this,  _ hates  _ the way she can’t even look at Echo because she feels embarrassed, like an uncontrolled outsider committing some awkward transgression. 

“We’re friends, Bellamy and I,” she says, and oh God, Clarke doesn’t want this, she doesn’t want this conversation now or ever. She doesn’t want to here all the ways that this woman who Bellamy used to look at with a constant edge of suspicion is now his best friend, is now someone who knows him better than Clarke ever will, she doesn’t want any of it.

“I can’t remember what I said last night,” Clarke lies, “but seriously, don’t worry about it. I wasn’t in my right mind, I told you.”

Echo ignores her. “I survived, if you recall, because you gave up your suit for me,  _ natblida _ .”

Clarke looks away. “I didn’t need it.”

“Nonetheless, you gave it up for me. I tried to kill you. You gave your suit up for me. And you gave up your life for us, all of us, to live.”

“As you can see, my life is intact.” Clarke forces a smile.

“I’m saying that they may have called you  _ wanheda _ , yet I owe you a life debt. I don’t enjoy  _ owing  _ other people things. But I never forget it.”

Clarke remains silent.

“We became friends,” Echo says, “all of us. They are my people.”  _ They are. Not you _ . The words are unsaid, but they both know what Echo meant. 

“Great.”

“But I remember why that happened, Clarke. I remember that I lived only because you gave yourself up. And so does he.” 

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“Bellamy’s memory is longer than you’re telling yourself it is,  _ natblida _ . Think on that next time you wonder who we became in space.”

Clarke doesn’t let herself exhale until Echo leaves. It’s not the conversation she thought they were going to have, but she’s not exactly comforted either. She’s sick of this, this waiting around while people try to teach her Bellamy in scraps and pieces. She’s sick of  _ Bellamy  _ for that matter, of watching him walk and speak and exist  _ around  _ her,  _ away  _ from her, and then coming back when she can’t fully understand him. She’s sick of Octavia, who’s rule still hangs over camp, a camp that’s supposed to be revelling in newfound freedom but is instead still reeling and roiling from whatever horrors they witnessed. She’s sick of everything and everyone, and if not for Madi, Clarke thinks she’d just pack up and go, go somewhere else where she can be alone, not live under the weight of constantly averted gazes and stuttered whispers. But she can’t do that. Madi loves it here, Madi loves having  _ people  _ and life around her. So Clarke will stay, and make damn sure that the girl has a happy and fulfilled life, because  _ someone  _ deserves to.

But for now, at this moment, Clarke needs  _ not  _ to be here. It’s the kind of day that demands retreating to where her rover is nestled away in the forest and lying on its hood, eyes closed against the sunlight as she tries not to think too much about times gone by.

No one looks her way as she slips towards the chain-link fence. Clarke is more cautious this time though, casting her gaze carefully behind her, a long sweeping glance to make sure there are no spies or snipers tracing her steps. She slips out when she’s satisfied, and then moves quickly towards the cover of the trees.

She makes her way through the forest quickly, keeping her tread silent, and she’s almost at the rover.

And then a hand clamps over her mouth, something heavy and blunt hits her on the head, and she sees black. 

*

The Eligius people have been staking her out for a while, so they tell her. 

“You can’t be surprised,” the woman tells her as Clarke tries to battle through the grogginess, “you’re an intriguing prospect.”

They saw her when they first came down, and grew wary when it appeared she joined with the other camp. One of their guards caught sight of her on one of her scouting missions, and they’ve been planning their move ever since.

“We don’t want to kill you,” the woman -- who seems to be the leader of the Eligius settlement -- says, although there’s an edge to her saccharine voice that tells Clarke that the woman might not be telling the truth. “We just want to tap into some of your considerable resources.”

Clarke struggles -- they’ve handcuffed her hands to the table in front of her. As she takes in her surroundings, she realises the room is set up like an interrogation chamber.

“What  _ resources _ ?” Clarke asks. Her voice comes out croaky and dry. “I don’t have the authority to negotiate any kind of deal from my camp to yours.”

The woman smiles. “Nothing like that, no. What we’re interested in is a more  _ valuable  _ commodity -- information.” She lets the word hang in the air between them. “You’ve survived by yourself, for a long time. You know the planet as it is today. Where to find potable water or arable land, which plants are edible and which animals are dangerous -- all of this is  _ essential  _ to our survival. Now we don’t want any  _ trouble _ with your camp,” her smirk tells Clarke exactly what kind of  _ trouble  _ she’s talking about, “but don’t you think it’s a  _ little  _ unfair that they get  _ all that knowledge _ ,” she taps Clarke’s temple with a bony finger, “to themselves?”

“You couldn’t just send an envoy?” Clarke spits. “You could just  _ ask _ .”

The woman laughs, soft and cold. “Oh Clarke. You’re not  _ that  _ naive. See, you’re valuable to  _ us _ . But I’m sure your own camp knows how much all your expertise is worth. We should be able to negotiate an… advantageous deal. For your return.”

_ They’re holding me ransom _ , she realises. Now Clarke laughs. Scoffs. “I’m not telling you anything,” Clarke grits out, “let me go.”

The woman sighs. “I was afraid you’d feel a little stubborn after your journey. Ah, well.” She snaps her fingers, and a guard emerges. “Stewart. Why don’t you show our  _ guest  _ to her rooms?”

Clarke struggles against the guard’s grip as he wrangles her out the chair and down the hall, but his grasp is tight.

“You’ll get a meal a day,” he says as he nods at another guard to unlock a cell, “stay quiet, and comply with the General’s demands. Then we might let you see the sun again.”

The iron bars clang shut, sealing her in. There’s a single moment of overwhelming, acute panic. Clarke curls her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms, letting the sharp pain ground her. She regains clarity quickly.  _ This _ , this is what she’s good at. Escaping, planning, surviving. She rattles off a list in her head quickly of all the information she has -- the Eligius people want her for information, meaning they won’t hurt her. And if they’ve spied on her, all they’ve seen is her spying and wandering round camp alone -- there’s no need to assume she’s dangerous. And if they want Skaikru to demand her return -- well they might be waiting a long time for that, but  _ they  _ don’t know that. All things considered, Clarke thinks they’ll probably leave her to herself while she’s in this cell. She’ll have to stall whenever they take her out for interrogation, and formulate a plan of escape before they work out that it’s unlikely anyone’s going to come for her and they realise they’ve vastly overestimated her value. 

*

It’s two days before the General brings Clarke out again. 

“I’m hoping you’re going to be more co-operative now,” she says.

“My people will come for me!” Clarke cries, hoping she’s selling the impassioned indignation, “you won’t get away with this.”

She’s back in the cell within a few hours.

*

A full week passes by the time Clarke has a fully formed plan. It’s going to be risky, given that she’ll be acting solo without any semblance of backup. And the plan only really gets her  _ out  _ of the Eligius settlement -- she still hasn’t decided how she’s going to get back to camp and to Madi without having a bunch of Eligius soldiers on her tail. But it’s been long enough that Clarke thinks they don’t perceive her as any real threat. If she waits too much longer they’re going to cotton on to the fact that she’s pretty much worthless as a hostage and then they might not be so lenient on her. She has to act now.

Clarke waits until the guard named Zeke is on duty -- he’s one of the more laidback ones, doesn’t make a point of yelling at her when she’s too restless, tends to leave her to herself.

She waits until he’s about midway through his shift, lulled into a sense of calm. 

“Please,” she rasps, “water.”

He eyes her warily. “You’ll get water at your scheduled meal time. It’s regulation.”

“Please,” she croaks again, “thirsty.”

Zeke watches her for another moment, then sighs. “Wait here.”

She bites back the sharp  _ well I don’t have much choice, do I?  _ and just nods.

He returns a few minutes later with a steel cup of water. Clarke crawls towards him, making sure the movements look laboured. Zeke leans close to slip the cup through the bars, and that’s when she makes her move. She forces his her own arm through the bars, grabs the scruff of his shirt and tugs him forward too sharply and quickly for him to have time to react. His head slams against the iron bars and he’s out cold in an instant, slumping to the floor. She winces as she stretches as far as she can, grabbing at the ring of keys where it’s strapped to his belt. It’s fiddly work, unclipping the bunch, but she’s become dexterous after years of foraging. She grins to herself as the keys come loose, and she tries them each as quickly as she can, huffing in satisfaction when one finally works and the door swings open. 

Clarke swears softly as she slides her arm out from between the bars and stretches it, but doesn’t waste any more time. She pats down his body until she finds the gun, and slips off his jacket for good measure. There’s no way in hell it will really fool anyone as a disguise, but it’s worth a shot. And anyway, she has the gun. Thankfully, Eligius’s cells are empty -- all the prisoners have been put to work building a settlement -- so no one has noticed the commotion. But another guard will be here to relief Zeke soon enough, and Clarke needs to get out of here before she’s discovered. She manages to make it into the main camp area unseen, then presses against the wall, waiting for a clear path. She pushes off forward when the coast seems clear, keeping her head ducked downwards and one hand on her gun. If she can skirt around the edges of the outbuildings to the perimeter fence, she’ll be out of the settlement.

Another guard is walking in her direction, and she wills herself not to react or panic.  _ Just keep walking _ , she tells herself,  _ he’ll go right past you _ .

The guard is almost to her now, he’s walking with purpose, he has somewhere else to be --

“Hey!”

_ Fuck _ . Apparently her invisibility ends outside of her own camp. 

“You! Where are you going?” 

She tries to look breezy, like she’s just pausing mid-step to answer his question. “The General wanted another pair of hands,” she bluffs, hoping it sounds official enough that he’ll let it go.

For a second, she thinks it’s going to work. He’s going to nod and walk away. But then his eyes flit down -- to where there’s a name badge sewn onto her chest.

“You’re not Shaw,” he spits, and then realisation dawns. “Hey, you’re the prisoner!” He goes for his radio even as he lunges for her. “Guards, back up in the main circle! Prisoner loose!” 

She darts out of his reach by a hair’s breadth, and then just turns and sprints. Guards are appearing left and right, and Clarke practically has to slalom to dodge them. The sound of firing starts, and she curses as a bullet hits the ground right in front of her. She rounds a corner, keeps going -- and slams right into one of the guards.

“No!” she yells as his arms band around her and force her still, “ _ no _ !” She was so close,  _ so close _ , and now she’s probably going to be chained up and--

“I’ll take it from here, boys,” he drawls across the settlement, “tell the General we got her.

“ _ Murphy _ ?” she hisses, incredulous.

“ _ Shh _ ,” he hisses right back. “We’re too far away for them to see who I am,” he mutters under his breath, “now don’t struggle. Let’s just slowly. Walk. Away.” 

He turns her cautiously, moving carefully towards the building that holds the General’s office, not doing anything that might cause the other guards -- the  _ real  _ guards -- to move closer. He waits until they’ve walked just past the building, away from the main view of the settlement before whispering in her ear: “see that bush just past the gate there? When I push you,  _ run _ .”

She nods briefly, and he takes another few methodical steps before giving her a firm shove forward, sending her staggering quickly towards the spot he indicated. She runs, runs without stopping, takes the fence at a jump, and collapses behind the bush gasping. 

Murphy joins her a moment later, pulling a radio from his belt. “Bellamy, do you copy? Over.”

She stiffens when Bellamy’s voice crackles back through. “I copy. Over.”

“You need to get out of there, now. I don’t know if you heard the chaos but plan B ended up having to go into effect. Over.”

“What?” he crackles back. “What the hell happened? We’re awaiting an audience with the General now. Over.”

“No time to explain. But at this point the General’s more likely to arrest you than liaise with you. Now hurry up and we’ll meet you back at the rover. Over.”

“Fine, we’ll see you there. Wait -- you got her, right? Over.”

Murphy rolls his eyes. “ _ Yes  _ I got her you dumbass. Now  _ hurry _ . Over.”

“Fine, go, we’ll catch up. Over.”

Murphy slips the radio away and then jerks his head, indicating that Clarke should get up. 

“Murphy what’s going on?” she hisses as she scrambles to her feet, following him.

“An extraction, obviously.”

He keeps going until they reach an open stretch of ground, where a rover -- one of the working ones, not Clarke’s wreck -- stands. 

“Jesus, do any of you even remember how to drive this thing?” she asks, clambering into the back behind Murphy.

“We didn’t crash on the way here,” he says, “though it was a close thing, given Blake was attempting to go at the speed of light or something.”

As if on cue, the front doors to the rover burst open, and Bellamy and Monty throw themselves in, both out of breath. Bellamy whips around so fast Clarke thinks his neck might snap, and he stares at her. His eyes are a little wild, a little desperate, and his hair glistens with sweat. He’s panting hard. For a moment, Clarke thinks he might say something, but he doesn’t, just spins back to face frontwards equally quickly, starting the rover and pulling forward so fast the vehicle seems to growl.

“You doing okay, Clarke?” Monty asks from the front seat.

It seems such a simple, innocuous question, in the face of everything. “Fine,” she says, “thanks for, um -- getting me.”  _ You didn’t have to do that  _ she almost adds, but catches herself, realising the sentiment would ring strange. 

“So,” Murphy says, leaning back in his seat once they’re properly underway, “I’m guessing there’s some sort of story here. How did they find you?”

Clarke worries her lip. There’s not really a good way to explain without revealing her little excursions outside of camp, and she’s self-conscious about letting them in on those. Besides, Bellamy might feel compelled to report back to Octavia. “They were watching me,” she settles on, “when I was on recon assignments and stuff.”

“You weren’t on a recon assignment when you got taken though, right?” Monty asks, puzzled.

“No,” she says, “it was all kind of a blur, you know? I don’t really remember how it happened.” She leans back against the side of the rover and lets her eyes fall shut. Bellamy, she notes isn’t saying anything, doesn’t speak until he pulls the rover into the parking bay. 

“Echo and Raven are keeping O occupied,” he tells Murphy,” Emori’s on gate duty so she’ll let us in. But we should go in in pairs to avoid drawing too much attention.”

Clarke frowns, a little confused, but Murphy and Monty just exchange a look and walk out of the bay towards the gate.

Leaving her with Bellamy. 

She’s about to turn to him, to ask him something, to try fill the silence, when he glares at her and grits out “how could you be so  _ stupid _ ?”

There’s a surprising viscerality to his voice; it makes her blink for a minute before she recovers. “ _ Excuse  _ me?”

He rounds on her for real then, the whole bulk of his fram looming over her. “Slipping out of camp unaccompanied without telling anyone? Disappearing into the forest by yourself?”   
“Yeah I will I’ve been doing both of those things since we got to this place,” she spits back at him, “how do you think I haven’t gone insane yet?”

“Do you have any idea how  _ irresponsible  _ that is?” he demands, “those rules are there for our  _ safety _ !”

She laughs at that. “Yeah, because everyone here has been so incredibly  _ safe  _ all this time.” 

“And what the hell were you thinking, going rogue in the middle of your captive’s camp like that?”

“I was  _ trying _ ,” she fumes, “to  _ escape _ !”

“Why couldn’t you just  _ wait _ ?” he yells back. “Just hang in there until we could negotiate with Eligius to release you?”

“ _ Because I didn’t think anyone would come _ !” she explodes, getting right up in his face, “I didn’t think anyone would have noticed I was gone, and I didn’t know if anyone would get to me if they had!”

He stares at her for a moment, before laughing, actually  _ laughing _ , the bastard. “Are you serious?” he demands, “are you  _ serious _ ? Your mom was going crazy! Madi was terrified, we were losing our minds,  _ I was losing my mind _ ! And you were going on some kind of ridiculous impossible escape mission and you could have been killed!”

“Yeah well that would have solved a lot of problems for you, wouldn’t it?!”

He freezes, and Clarke can almost feel the air shift as his entire body goes tense, rigid. “What the hell are you talking about?”

She rolls her eyes. “Please. The way you’ve been acting, I may as well have died with Praimfaya. And you sure seemed pissed off when I got back and you realised that sniper never made his shot?”   
“ _ What  _ sniper?” he demands.

“The one you and your sister sent after me! You know, the day you told her what an untrustworthy loose canon I was?”

He looks pale. “O -- she -- she sent a  _ sniper  _ after you?”   
“I mean, I’d probably do the same,” Clarke folds her arms, “if I had reason to believe there was some kind of rogue lunatic in my camp.”

“She --  _ fuck _ .” He staggers backwards. “That wasn’t how it was supposed to go. That -- why would she  _ do that _ ?”

“What are you looking so  _ distressed _ for?” she demands, “you’re the one that told her you didn’t trust me!”

“I was  _ lying _ , Clarke!” he yells, breaking like a dam, “I was  _ lying _ ! She was going to send you out without any backup into hostile territory with a storm on the horizon, and you were just gonna  _ go _ . I told her -- I said I didn’t trust you, I said all that shit -- I thought she wouldn’t make you go. I thought she’d let you be. Not that…” He scrubs a hand down his face, and Clarke can’t break her gaze away from him. She feels light-headed all of a sudden.

“But…you do everything she tells you,” she whispers, “ever since you got back you’ve just…been her second-in-command.”

“She’s my sister,” he says, “I fought so hard to get back to her. I wanted to make sure everything would be  _ right _ . Then I found out that she’s…” he closes her eyes, and Clarke knows he’s seeing the girl again, the girl bleeding on the operating table. “I thought I could help. Make her see reason. Try to make her judgements less harsh--” his expression is cracked open and raw, and something inside of Clarke aches.

“Well,” she says doubtfully, “you got her to agree to pay my ransom instead of leaving me for dead.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything.

Clarke cracks a grim smile. “Let me guess -- she wanted to leave me for dead?”

He stares at the ground. “That’s why we had to split off. We’re not supposed to have a rover. We’re not supposed to be gone. We had to plan this in secret, all of us.”

She waits until he looks back at her. “Why?” she asks him, “why did you bother?”

Bellamy stares at her, brow furrowed, but then Clarke sees Madi hurtling towards her from the corner of her eye.

“You’re  _ back _ !” the girl cries, flinging her arms around Clarke’s neck, “I was scared!”

Clarke picks her up, clutching her tightly. “I’m back,” she says, petting Madi’s hair, “sorry for the detour.”

When she sets Madi down, Madi hurls herself at Bellamy, who crouches to hug her tightly.

“Thank you,” she mumbles into his shoulder, “you got her back.”

“Thank  _ you _ ,” he says, “for being so brave.”

*

Clarke doesn’t see him again until that night. He knocks softly on her door.    
“Can we talk?” he asks.

“Oh, now you wanna talk?” Clarke retorts before she can stop herself. He winces at the acerbic tone, but doesn’t respond. She sighs, shrugs, and gets up, trying to pretend that their conversation from earlier isn’t playing on a loop in her head, occupying most of her conscious thoughts. 

They pad softly through the camp until they reach a little backlot, a scrapyard.

“You wanted to talk?” she prompts.

“You thought I wanted you dead,” he says without preamble.

Clarke looks away. 

“I thought you’d hate me,” he says, and that gets her attention. “We got back and found you here,  _ alive _ , and… and it hit me that we left you. We left you, and we came back, and I didn’t understand how you couldn’t hate us.”

She stares at him. “Are you serious?” she demands. “I -- Bellamy, I  _ told  _ you to go. If you hadn’t left me we’d all be dead.”

“I know.” He ruffles his hair with his hand. “And we owe you our lives--”

“Stop it,” she burst out quickly. He blinks owlishly. “Just… I can’t listen to it anymore, alright? All this talk about how noble my sacrifice was and how much you guys owe me.” Her voice is starting to crack, she can hear it. “I don’t want your debt, or your gratitude. It doesn’t -- that’s not why I did it. And besides, it doesn’t mean anything, not when… not when you can’t even look at me.”

Bellamy doesn’t have anything to say to that. Not for a while. The words hang there, the truth of them inescapable.

“I used to see your face,” he says suddenly. “In the GoSci Ring. At night, I could never sleep. I used to just…stare out the window, at the Earth, to keep reminding myself of everything -- everyone -- that Praimfaya swallowed up. I think I could have gone crazy with it. And then, I don’t know… I started just imagining you were there. Whenever things got hard up there, which was pretty much all the time, I used to just pretend I could see you. Like you were going through everything with me. Fuck, I think it got to the point where I didn’t even have to imagine it anymore, I just saw your face wherever I looked, every time I closed my eyes. And it helped at first, but after a while…” he leans against a post, staring into the distance. “I was a wreck. I couldn’t deal with it, waking up every day and realising you were just a dream, blinking and remembering you weren’t really there. And then I remembered what you told me,” his gaze flickers to her, “about using my head. And I had to force myself to accept that -- that you were gone.” She sees the bob of his throat when he swallows. “I had to move on, Clarke, because otherwise you’d have died for nothing, and that would be the worst thing I could do to you. So I left my heart on Earth and moved on Clarke.

“And then I got back. I got back and -- and you were, you’re  _ here _ . I discovered you’d been alive the whole time but I didn’t know what to do with that, because losing you and having to move on from that… it almost destroyed me the first time. And I didn’t -- I  _ don’t  _ know if I could survive it again.”

It’s only the slightest puff of wind chilling her cheeks that lets Clarke know she’s crying. “I should have been happy,” she whispers. “Every day, I told myself you were out there, happy and alive, and it made everything easier. And then you got back, and that should have been it, the best part  of the past six years. But--” she has to cut herself off, to work past the lump that’s lodged itself in her throat. “Sometimes,” she forces the words out, forces them from the smallest, darkest parts of her, the parts she’s always kept locked up and buried for Madi’s sake, for her  _ own  _ sake, “sometimes, since you got back… I wonder if it wouldn’t been easier if I’d died.” She’s crying properly now, can’t make herself look at Bellamy. “Because… you’ve moved on. To you, I’ve been dead for six years and you’ve moved on, and that’s  _ fine _ , that’s  _ good _ , but I can’t stop… I feel so  _ angry  _ sometimes. I don’t wanna feel like that but I do!” She shoves at him suddenly, without really thinking about it; it’s not hard, not even forceful enough to move him, but she wants him to  _ feel  _ her. “I get why, okay? I get why you’re shutting me out and acting like I don’t exist, but it doesn’t help. I know I asked you to leave me behind, and I tell myself I’m glad you did, and I was glad, but now you’re back, and-- and-- and-- you’re still leaving me behind. And I don’t know how to catch up anymore.” The words are torn from her in a rush, she’s still shoving at him as she speaks, sobbing and feeling like she’s being wrenched into pieces. 

“Clarke,” his voice comes out in a rasp, “ _ Clarke _ . Oh God, Clarke,” he catches her hands gently, circling his fingers round her wrists and tugging her into him, gathering her to his chest.

She fold forward easily, muffling her sobs into his shirt, shivering as the sensation of being really touched,  _ held  _ in so long overwhelms her. He’s saying something, she realises, murmuring something into her hair as they cling to each other. Somehow, amidst the wracking of both their sobs, she picks out the words. “I’m sorry,” he’s saying, gasping, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” 

She says the words back, presses into him as though that will drive her own litany of apologies home harder; all the while they stay enmeshed in each other’s arms, two broken things trying to hold each other together while they fall apart.   
*

It’s late, or early, depending how you look at it, when they finally pull apart. 

“We have to try,” he says, wiping his face with his hand, composing himself. “It’s not going to be easy. But if we want to find our way back to each other, then we gotta try.”

Clarke nods, waits a beat. “You want to?”

His smile if sad. “I didn’t think there could be anything worse than losing you. So I held back. But there is something worse.”

“Yeah?”

He reaches up to push a loose curl behind her ear, lets his finger trace the curve of her cheek before dropping his hand. “Not having you at all.”

She manages a soft laugh. “What a line.”

He chuckles quietly before growing serious again. “But yes, I want to. So if you’ll have me, if you want to try to, I want to work on this.”

She rests her forehead against his chest again, the steady pulse of his heartbeat a reminder that he’s here, really here. “I want to,” she whispers. “Together?”

“Together.”

*

Nothing magically fixes itself after that. But slowly, incrementally, it becomes easier to try. Bellamy waits outside her cabin the next morning. The smiles they trade are soft, tentative, still a little raw. He walks with her and Madi to the mess hall, and when they arrive, he asks her a question with his eyes. She manages a nod, and they walk to his table -- their table -- letting Madi’s chatter ebb away the silence. 

Her friends smile when she sits down next to him, and it’s not like there’s a moment where everything just clicks into place, but Raven asks her how she’s holding up after her ordeal, and Clarke answers, and asks what she and Emori were doing while they were away, and slowly, surely the conversation builds. Every now and then, Bellamy catches her eye and smiles, and she’ll squeeze his hand under the table, a constant string of assurances keeping them tethered together.

She starts spending time with the others as well, with Emori and Harper and Monty and the rest, exchanging stories about Earth and space. It’s tentative to begin with -- they’re clearly worried about hurting her, saying something to remind her that they had lives while they thought her dead, but it gets easier. She likes it, she discovers, likes being able to imagine that they were happy, that she didn’t stay behind for nothing. 

Clarke isn’t sure when Bellamy finds out about the whole of Octavia’s reign, whether Miller tells him or someone else, but she finds him staring at his feet sitting outside his cabin.

“We’re having an election,” he says. “There’s too much dissatisfaction stirring. Octavia’s guards won’t take her orders. And people don’t see a reason for her to maintain absolute control when the bunker’s opened. Her council voted for her to step down; I think she knows there’s no point in resisting.”

“Did… did you vote against her as well?”

He stares at the ground still. “I called for a vote of no confidence. After I heard about the -- you know.”

Clarke lowers herself next to him. It’s the right decision, but it can’t have been an easy one. “Worried she won’t forgive you?”

“I’m more worried I won’t be able to forgive her.”

She stares at him, trying to read his expression.

Bellamy sighs. “She’s my sister. And I’ll always love her, always. But...” he glances skywards, like he’s conferring with some greater power. “She’s a grown-up now. She’s… I can’t be responsible for her anymore. And when her decisions have the power to hurt this many people, when they  _ have  _ hurt this many people… I have to do what’s best. For everyone.”

Clarke nods, but when she gives him her hand, he squeezes it tightly, and she lets him take what comfort he needs. 

“It’s a lot to process, huh?”

Bellamy nods. “It’s just… I can’t put it together in my head, you know? The little kid I used to give piggyback rides round the room to, and the… the cannibal? I don’t fucking know.”

Clarke nods. “I mean, it’s not like the algae you were eating in space could have been that appealing, but I notice none of you resorted to eating Murphy.”

Bellamy blinks at her for a moment. “What… Clarke,  _ no _ ,” he splutters, “no that is so fucked up! I can’t believe you’re  _ joking  _ about this!” he says, but he’s laughing, slightly hysterically. 

“I know it’s fucked up,” Clarke says, rubbing a hand up-and-down his back as he convulses with the laughter, as it turns into gasping, into crying, quiet crying as reality sets in for him. “I know. But we have to move on from it now. You’ll make yourself crazy if you try force yourself to understand it.”

He nods, leaning into her touch. “I’ll be okay,” he says, “I will. Just… gimme a minute.”

“Maybe tomorrow?” she asks.

He offers her a watery smile. “Maybe tomorrow.”

*

It’s a quiet evening, just after dinner, when they go to the rover. Madi had spent the day demanding stories from Bellamy, and they put her to bed together. Clarke shouldn’t be surprised that he’s taken to the girl the way he has, but it warms her nonetheless.

“It’s just over here,” she says, shoving through low-hanging branches until they reach the dilapidated vehicle.

“So this is it, huh?” he asks, “your escape.”

She smiles as he hoists himself up to join her on the hood of the rover and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “It was, when I needed one.”

“Thank you,” he says quietly, looking down at her, “for bringing me here.”

“I wanted to show you,” she shrugs, but ducks her head nonetheless. The moonlight spills over the trees, and then  _ there  _ it is, what she really wanted to show him. As nightime settles, the forest flickers to life, glowing with bioluminescence and illuminating their surrounds with hazy blue light.

The light pours across Bellamy’s face, over his lips as they part with wonder and his eyes widen. She watches his profile as he watches the forest, a deep contented warmth, a happiness like she hasn’t felt in a long time settling itself in her chest. 

“Wow,” he breathes, “this is -- holy shit.”   
“I used to come here with Madi,” she tells him. “On the hardest days. Remind myself that you’d have something to come back to.”   
When she looks up at him, his eyes are on hers. “I always did,” he says, “whether or not I knew it. I always did-- I always will.”

When he kisses her, it’s slow and sure, his hands threading into her hair as her arms wind around his neck. She sighs into his mouth, and he groans, pulling her closer, closer until she can’t tell where he ends and she begins. 

He tips his forehead down to rest against hers when they pull apart, eyes still closed. She can feel his pulse race under her fingertips where they rest on his wrist.

“Hey,” he says, his lips tugging into a smile, eyes still closed.

She leans up, brushes her mouth against his once more, just softly, just to enjoy the fact that she can. “Hey.”

“Was that okay?” he asks, opening his eyes at last.

She laughs, because  _ seriously _ . “Yeah,” she says, “yeah. Better than okay.”

“Just checking.” 

He shifts her around a bit so that she’s seated between his legs, leaning against his chest with his arms firm around her. She tips her head back a little so he can rest his chin on it.

“It’s funny,” he says, “back before Praimfaya, before I left, I used to think about doing that.”

“What?” she asks, feigning ignorance.

He nips her ear, and she grins.

“ _ That _ ,” he chides her.

“Why didn’t you?”

He snorts softly, and she feels his chest rise with the motion. “The timing was never right. There was always someone else, or some _ thing  _ else, or some catastrophe to solve.”

She hums, threading their fingers together across her stomach.

“I always figured I’d wait until  _ after _ . You know? So I felt like kind of an idiot when I thought I’d waited so long you’d been incinerated.”

“You’re a charmer, Blake.”

She can feel him grin against her hair. “It’s just… it’s strange to think that this is it.”

“The after?”

“Yeah. The after.”

She cranes her head back to look at him and meets his smile with one of her own. “I like the sound of that.” He ducks to kiss her again. “You know,” she says when he pulls back, “we should probably head back soon.”

“Probably,” he grants, brushing her sides and making her shiver when his fingers dip under her t-shirt. “But you know, we have time.”

And, Clarke realises, for what feels like the first time, they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with this one guys! I'd love to know what you thought of the second chapter, and also --kudos/comments make the world go round and the hiatus go faster <3 <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> ....sorry? Plz comment and lmk if you're interested in part 2, which I'm writing now and should go up soon! There will be more Bellamy, I promise...


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